True Murder

by Yaba Badoe

  ‘What have my parents got to do with this?’

  Very quietly she replied: ‘They divorced, didn’t they? Divorce isn’t anything to be ashamed of, Ajuba.’

  I didn’t realise that I was ashamed. Her questions puzzled me, and when she asked me if Isobel reminded me of anyone, I sensed danger immediately.

  ‘My mother doesn’t steal!’ I protested. ‘She doesn’t!’

  ‘But Isobel does remind you of her, doesn’t she?’

  ‘No! She’s nothing like my mother. Mama believes in the power of God, Mrs Derby, and with God everything is possible!’ I cried, quoting my mother’s favourite Adinkra symbol: Gye Nyame, the power of the moon and the sun in one: the symbol she wore as earrings and on a chain around her neck. ‘Mama doesn’t steal!’

  With infinite care, Mrs Derby touched my arm. She stroked it with a forefinger and asked: ‘Do you want to talk about what happened to your mother, Ajuba?’

  ‘Nothing happened to her. She’s getting better, and she’d write to me if she could, but she’s not very well at the moment.’

  I wanted to tell her that my mother was with Aunt Lila, and that because even Aunt Lila didn’t know where I was, none of them could write to me. But the expression on Mrs Derby’s face took my voice away. What had I done wrong? What had I said that I shouldn’t have said?

  Mrs Derby held on to my hand: ‘Ajuba, I want you to try and tell me what happened to your mother.’

  ‘She’s at home,’ I insisted. ‘Aunt Lila’s looking after her.’

  ‘Ajuba, you know that isn’t true.’

  The moment she said those words, the air rushed out of me as if she had bludgeoned my chest with her fist. I couldn’t catch my breath. Tiny ants of fear, scrabbling beneath my skin, ignited my senses. Her face grew large as she brought it close to mine. I saw the hairs on her chin, grains of powder on her nose. How could she tell such a blatant lie? I knew that what I was saying was true because of the evidence of my eyes. It had to be true. Mama had told me time and time again: through God everything is possible. And one day in the distant future, Pa, the most errant and irresponsible of fathers, would return to us and we would be a family again.

  ‘Ajuba, your mother’s dead.’

  I tore my hand away, clenching it into a fist. ‘She didn’t die. She didn’t die. She opened her eyes. I woke her up!’

  ‘My dear, your mother died in hospital.’

  ‘But I saw her open her eyes. And the ambulance took her away.’

  ‘Didn’t your father tell you?’

  ‘He said . . . he said . . .’ Pa had said that I was never going to see my mother again, and that I should forgive her, even though what she had done was dreadful; an affront to everything he stood for. But Mama had told me to turn my back on my father, and not to believe his lies. Gradually, the possibility came to me that perhaps Pa hadn’t been lying after all. What if he had told me the truth?

  My resistance weakening, I felt tears trickling down my face, welling in salty pools around my mouth. I remembered Miss Edith’s tears, the bitter taste of surrender. I wiped my face with a sleeve, struggling to suppress my feelings, but I couldn’t stop crying, and for a moment I was in the rose room again. Did I see Miss Edith? Or was the person I saw crying me? I heard a child sobbing. What was happening to me?

  From a distance I was aware of Mrs Derby holding me in an awkward embrace. My body stiffened but, with my tears persisting, I slowly gave way to her sympathy.

  Mrs Derby kept me for the rest of the evening, bringing in a tray for our supper. Banishing Major Derby from the drawing-room and yet another repeat of Dad’s Army on television, she gave me her undivided attention. Between my disbelief and my tears, the fractured sobs of bewilderment that threatened to rend me apart, she pieced together my account of Mama’s nervous breakdown: our flight to London, Mama’s attempt at suicide, and how I managed to raise the alarm. And then, when Pa told me that I would never see her again, I explained to Mrs Derby as best as I could the many reasons Mama had given me not to believe a word he said. My mother had warned me that one day my father would try and steal me from her. If he did, he would try to deceive me by poisoning my mind, so I should block my ears to whatever he said. Mama had promised that wherever she was, she would always love me, and before long we would find each other again.

  ‘Are you sure Mama died?’ I asked again, still unable to grasp the finality of the words. I was hoping that a mistake had been made, and that my mother was with Aunt Lila. She wouldn’t have wanted me to grow up without her. I needed my mother alive.

  ‘I’m afraid she did,’ Mrs Derby confirmed. ‘I would never lie to you, Ajuba, I promise. I am telling the truth.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  She did what I asked of her, and when I started crying again, she drew me into her arms. Despite her scent of lavender and the accommodating flatness of her chest, her arms – reminding me of arms that had held me since birth – made me push Mrs Derby away. Mama smelt of jasmine and traces of lemon and nutmeg.

  ‘If she really died,’ I argued, ‘then why wouldn’t Pa let me see her?’

  ‘I don’t know what was in your father’s mind, Ajuba, so I can’t speak for him, but many people don’t think it’s appropriate for a child to see a dead body. It can be upsetting and very painful indeed.’

  ‘Is that why they wouldn’t let Maria see her father when he died in Angola?’

  Sarah Derby nodded.

  I still couldn’t believe her. It wasn’t possible. Mama wouldn’t abandon me. I was certain that if I tried hard enough, one day I would track her down. All I had to do was believe and it would happen. I wouldn’t fail her again. I attempted to bolster my conviction with memories of my mother’s love for me, but, seeing unwavering compassion on Mrs Derby’s face, my confidence faltered. Furious at my father and at my own inability to distinguish truth from lies, I kept trying to make Mrs Derby see things my way, in the hope that she would say the words I wanted to hear: Mama was alive. She was with Aunt Lila.

  ‘But I asked to see her, Mrs Derby. I wanted to see her so I would know if he was telling the truth.’

  My mother used to say that the truth would open my eyes and set me free. It had done no such thing. It was crushing every hope I had for tomorrow.

  ‘If I had known, if I had seen her, then I would have said goodbye to her. How can she be gone, Mrs Derby, if I didn’t say goodbye?’

  ‘You’re beginning to say goodbye to her now,’ Mrs Derby assured me. ‘I know it’s not going to be easy, but you’re a very brave girl, Ajuba.’

  I was in her arms again, clinging to her scent of lavender as I swayed back and forth. Struggling to comprehend the horror of what she said Mama had done, I tried to bite through the palm of my hand. I needed to see my blood, to taste it on my tongue to make sure I was alive. If, after all this time, Mama no longer existed, how could I be sure that I was real? I tried desperately to puncture the flesh, but Mrs Derby wouldn’t let me. She held me, comforting me, while I wept in her arms.

  20

  THAT NIGHT I slept in Polly’s bed. Even though she was in London, I couldn’t bear to be in my own bed alone with my grief. I needed to feel close to Polly, hugging her duvet while I remembered my mother: her face that last morning in Lewisham as I waited for the ambulance. I had held her hand and stared into her eyes. She hadn’t wanted to stay with me, and no matter how good I was, how much I loved her and cared for her, I was simply not enough. I wept into Polly’s pillow, clinging to traces of orange and cinnamon from her hair.

  The following night, when she returned to school, I crept in beside her as soon as the lights were out, holding on to her as if my life depended on the rise and fall of her breathing. Without realising it, Polly kept me afloat in uncharted waters. And when I felt the tentacles of octopuses dragging me down by the ankles, it was Polly who unwittingly brushed them away. Yet I couldn’t tell her what I was going through.

  Strangely, as I absorbed Mrs
Derby’s revelation, my mother’s presence crystallised around me. Surfacing from behind my eyelids, she stepped into the open. I felt her touch on my hand while I struggled to accept she was gone. Smelling her scent on my breath, catching a glimpse of her shadow in the doorway of Exe, I followed her into the corridor outside. But she wasn’t there. She had left me stranded; alone in a place where I was deemed deluded, over-imaginative, in need of help. ‘Cranky,’ Polly called me. I suppose I was all those things. Yet there was truth in what I had seen at Graylings. My misfortune is that no one believed me.

  My deepest regret, after my conversation with Mrs Derby, was that I hadn’t allowed her closer, sooner. Had I done so, and had she known me better, perhaps she would have taken my concern for Polly seriously. What’s more, the focus of Mrs Derby’s attention shifted to me and she became preoccupied with my problems rather than Polly. For that I can never forgive myself.

  That’s why I had to see Aunt Lila in London last September. I needed someone of my blood, from my part of the world, to tell my story to. When she had heard everything, Aunt Lila told me that she believes I have a special gift, a way of seeing the world that goes beneath the surface to a reality that is too bright for most people to grasp. It is an ability that, if used in the wrong way, can lead to madness. It had that effect on my mother and my uncle, who summoned up the sea goddess from the lagoon.

  But Aunt Lila appears to have confidence in me. She told me last summer that, having come this far, she sees no reason why I shouldn’t stay the course. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘you’re over the worst now. You spent your childhood among strangers who didn’t understand you. And no matter what you may think, Ajuba, you are not your mother. You are much stronger than Grace ever was.’

  Yet if I’m honest with myself, it’s the fear of madness that keeps me from mirrors.

  After her weekend in London, Polly assumed that my unhappiness at school was connected with my father. Halfway through a call from Rome, he had informed me that he was about to marry Nina.

  ‘Come on, Aj. Hurry up!’

  Polly was calling me. She was dragging me upstairs. I lay down, stiff and cold on my narrow bed.

  ‘Lighten up, Aj. Snap out of it. If Peter married again, I would understand. I’d have to. Anyways, Nina’s not so bad.’

  ‘She’s not my mother.’ I wanted Mama. I wanted Mama.

  ‘Aj, it’s going to be fine. You’ll see.’

  Where was Mama now that she was gone? Where do people travel when they die?

  ‘Aj, I hate it when you’re like this! You’ve got to snap out of it. Nina is awesome, kiddo. You’ll get to like her.’

  I buried my face in my pillow.

  I didn’t know it then, but my stepmother, Pa’s new wife, was already pregnant with the son my father had always wanted. The following week, Pa called me again. The excitement in his voice made him sound younger, and for a moment I wasn’t sure who I was talking to. His usual ponderous tone was warm, almost tender, when he told me that in the new year he would be moving with Nina to London. He said it was his dearest wish that we should celebrate the start of the year as a family for the first time. He had been headhunted for a job at the Commonwealth Secretariat. I believe my father knew he had neglected me. However, he rejected Mrs Derby’s suggestion that I see a child therapist. He hoped that having regular contact with me would resolve my problems; and most important of all, Pa had convinced himself that life with Nina would turn things around for both of us.

  His good intentions notwithstanding, when I most needed the support of an adult, it was Mrs Derby who stood by me. Within a few days I was in the drawing-room again, explaining as best I could that although Polly had invited me home for the weekend and I was happy to spend the daylight hours with her, I didn’t want to spend another night under Isobel’s roof. Appreciating how deeply I felt, Mrs Derby made sure that I got my way.

  Somehow, despite my reservations and night terrors, Polly had managed to coax me back to Graylings. Isobel was much better, she assured me. OK, she wasn’t a full dollar yet, but then she never had been. She had always been inclined, to use Polly’s words, to ‘hum a little off key’. The thing to remember, Polly insisted, was that Isobel was no longer freaking out.

  ‘She’s found herself a shrink,’ she told me. ‘A geek called Robert she dumps on twice a week. And she’s getting better, Aj. She’s really getting better. Peter seems to thinks so as well. Do you know what a shrink is?’

  We had spent the morning playing in the autumn sunshine, a game we made up as we went along: Genghis Khan laying waste to the world, which entailed running through woodland, a stick in hand, attacking everything in our path. Of course, Polly was Genghis Khan, and I was one of her rampaging hordes assisting in the subjugation of the civilised world. But there are only so many ways to enact conquest, rape and pillage; having exhausted our limited repertoire, we were lying beneath our beds in the rose room, shining torches in each other’s faces.

  We weren’t pretending to read now. We were simply looking at one another. I was hiding from Isobel and Polly was humouring me. I replied that I didn’t know what a shrink was, so she proceeded to enlighten me.

  ‘They’re guys you go to when you’re too stupid to figure things out for yourself. They help you sort out your head when you’re totally, totally messed up. Like when you do things like Isobel did to Peter.’

  ‘You mean when you go mad?’

  ‘Yeah. Like when you’re so fucked up, it’s awesome.’

  ‘We call them psychiatrists in Ghana,’ I explained.

  My mother had seen a psychiatrist. He had given her medicine to clear her head. It had made her sleep a lot. I used to watch over her while she slept.

  ‘Is Isobel taking medicine for the mess in her head?’ I asked.

  ‘No way! I promise, she’s a whole heap better, Aj. OK, I’m not saying she’s a bundle of laughs. She’s never been that. But she’s not on my case all the time. She’s too busy figuring out her feelings.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You better believe it, kiddo. She lets me eat what I want now and she’s even talking to Peter. Is that wholesome or what? Hallo? I mean, it’s so much easier for a pre-teenager if the folks who brought her to Planet Earth talk to each other. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I mean, life sucks enough already without them fucking me up as well. And she’s taken up karate, Aj. Which is kind of cool, don’t you think?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  She must have heard a note of caution creeping into my voice. Setting her bravado aside, she expressed a niggling suspicion, a blot on the picture she was describing of a reconstituted, rational Isobel. Polly’s concern was to do with the drama unravelling in Peter’s old study. Isobel was reclaiming the one room that had truly belonged to him. And it was her mother’s compulsion to enter the study day after day and what she was doing inside it that perplexed my friend. It was why Polly wanted me back at Graylings. She had invited me home to check it out.

  I wanted to find out what was going on, but with the memory of Isobel’s fury still bright in my mind, I refused to leave our sanctuary unless there was another adult in the house. So when Belinda Bradshaw arrived for an afternoon visit, we finally ventured out of the rose room. Isobel had instructed us not to disturb her while she was in the study. In fact, she had said that she didn’t want anyone there under any circumstances. But now that she was entertaining, I was as curious as Polly to investigate what she was up to.

  To get to the study unobserved, we had to creep through the kitchen. Isobel had lit a fire and the two women were relaxing on a sofa drinking coffee and consuming what seemed to be the remnants of a large bottle of Spanish brandy. Outside, it had turned damp and blustery, thin sticks of wisteria tapping the windowpanes. Perhaps the brandy opened a confessional streak in Mrs Bradshaw; I heard her saying to Isobel: ‘Charlie would leave me if he could. He’d leave me if he wasn’t so lazy and the farm wasn’t mine. All it would take is some b
imbo with enough dosh, and he’d be off. Mark my words.’ She added a splash of brandy to her coffee. ‘Men!’ she scoffed. ‘Bloody, bloody men!’

  Polly raised an eyebrow, amused by the opprobrium Peter’s departure had provoked in Isobel’s closest friend. Then, opening the study door quietly, she watched my face as I took in the transformation before me.

  ‘What do you think, Aj?’

  I didn’t know what to think. I was astounded by what I saw hanging on the walls, leaning against them, on the bookshelves, spread out on the floor. Isobel had turned Peter’s study into the space she had planned for the attic. She had converted it into a studio. When I thought about it, it made perfect sense: the light was from the north, the space generous. She was reshaping with the ferocity of her imagination the one room that Peter had possessed.

  She must have spent every day sketching her children. On a trestle table were scores of pen-and-ink drawings, and beside them photographs she had used to help her etch out their features: Theo as a baby; Theo as a boy, compliant and easy; Polly a defiant toddler of two, and then a smiling six-year-old. Peter, Isobel had left alone, presumably because there was enough of him to contend with in Polly.

  ‘You see why I had to show you, Aj? It’s kind of weird finding out after all this time that Isobel, of all people, paints. Hallo? Mommy dearest an artist? I think not.’

  We were rifling through Isobel’s paintings and sketches, tracking her artistic progress together. Stacked in a corner was a series she had done in oil. Discarding her brush, she must have painted them with a soft piece of wood, playing with it to create an impressionist haze of colour: the curve of Polly’s cheek, her questioning gaze. All her most recent pictures were of Polly. The studio was cluttered with them, and despite my friend’s indifference to almost everything else her mother did, she was naturally intrigued by Isobel’s new passion. It revealed a side of her mother new to us; a side that was usually kept hidden. We didn’t need anyone to tell us that Isobel was obsessed. She had painted her daughter again and again.